One of the most sincere forms of flattery in video games is the cameo. If you like someone, take them out of their franchise of origin—or even from real life—and put them in a game you'd never expect to find them in.

In my opinion, these are the ten best guest appearances in video games of all time. Some cameos are on this list due to how popular they were, some are here because of how unexpected they were, and some are included because they were simply too weird to not mention. Let's check them out.

10. Lucca –Xenogears

When Xenogears was first announced, the hype was unimaginable. But for a while, it looked as if the game would never make it to the States due to its heavy religious themes. However, it eventually got approved to come to our shores, and the young Internet exploded with crude fan pages playing MIDI renditions of the game's soundtrack. Anyone who was even slightly interested in Xenogears followed it as an obsession. When we first booted up the game and went into one of the first buildings in the starting town, we found Lucca from Chrono Trigger standing there. It was as if Square was saying, "Hey guys, we still know what a good RPG is."

9. Aerosmith - Revolution X

Revolution X was an arcade light gun game where you fought against an oppressive government that wanted to stifle free thought and artistic expression. You battled this tyranny with the power of rock and roll, of course, with the guys from Aerosmith as your wingmen. And this was Aerosmith captured in full motion video when the technology was still young. Add a small sampling of their music, a couple humongous bosses, and the same dude in a yellow suit dying over and over again, and you have one rockin' cameo.

Vyse and Aika were the main characters from Skies of Arcadia, an awesome cult classic JRPG for the Dreamcast. When Valkyria Chronicles came out, we got to see Vyse and Aika again, except this time they were fighting in a strange anime retelling of World War II. Here's the thing though, they were easily some of the best troops in the game. Nearly everyone who played Valkyria Chronicles used these two in their squad, though only a few ever realized that they were originally sky pirates from another game. This cameo was awesome because only people with good taste in JRPGs even knew it existed. Skies of Arcadia forever!

7. Link and Samus - Super Mario RPG

I'm pretty sure the reason there's not another Super Mario RPG being made has to do with licensing. I mean, this was a Squaresoft game made with Nintendo characters, and it's pretty obvious that they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with Nintendo's properties. Case in point, if you looked around hard enough, you could find Link and Samus sleeping in beds in the game's inns and castles. Unfortunately, that's all they really did—sleep. But it was still pretty cool to find them.

6. Pretty Much Anyone Ever - SoulCalibur

At this point, who hasn't been in SoulCalibur? Heihachi, Spawn, Link, Lloyd Irving, KOS-MOS, Darth Vader, and Yoda have already made appearances, and Ezio is slated to be in the upcoming SoulCalibur V. Seriously, this tale of souls and swords eternally retold sure has one hell of a guest appearances list. Who else do you think will show up in SoulCalibur before the series ends? Maybe Kratos from God of War? How about Scorpion from Mortal Kombat? Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden? At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if PaRappa the Rapper found his way into pages of SoulCalibur history.